Did you know there was an important Civil War battle that was fought right here on the grounds of the Cameron Art Museum?

Last year when I was visiting, I came upon a sculpture by North Carolina artist Steven Hayes, and it tells the story of the US colored troops who fought that battle.

It's called Boundless, and I spoke to curator Daniel Jones about this remarkable exhibit.

So Daniel, tell me a little bit more about the Civil War battle here.

- Yeah, so it was called the Battle of Forks Road, and it was the final battle of the Wilmington campaign before the Union liberates Wilmington and kind of fast tracks the end of the war.

So Wilmington probably didn't start that important, but as all the bigger ports throughout the south got captured like Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans, that's when all eyes turned towards Wilmington because it was that last major Confederate seaport standing.

So the union put together an offensive to capture Wilmington, but they couldn't just land their soldiers here.

They actually had to go get Fort Fisher about 15 miles south from here at Curry Beach, and from there, those soldiers started marching north towards Wilmington, and this was that final place where the Confederates dug in their last defensive line and then five regiments of USCT fought here for a couple days in February of 1865.

Once they did successfully win this battle, they marched into Wilmington, they liberated, and within about five and a half weeks, Robert E. Lee signs the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.

- How have visitors responded to this sculpture?

- The support has been overwhelming from young, old, all different backgrounds, ethnicities.

Since this statue has been here for the past couple years, it's really let me know that people want to have these conversations, they just need a place to do it, and that's what this statue serves as.

It kind of creates that dialogue for us.

I quickly learned also that people are way more receptive to talking about these types of local histories when there's a visual aid attached to it.

You know, a piece of art or a performance, dance, singing, poetry, and so as you can kind of see, we've activated the spaces almost like an informal classroom/amphitheater.

So we use Boundless as like a foundation to talk about who we are as a community currently.

We can do that in a plethora ways, so it's not just, you don't have to be a history buff to come like this area.

It's really cool.

You can come out here and listen to music.

You can come out here and watch dance, listen to poetry.

So the reception has just been fantastic.

Support's been great.